Kasandra Martinez, Marisa Gloria, Melinda Moon

Defining Culture Notes: (6-7-11)

Book: Mix It Up By: David Grazian
  • artistic activity
  • humanity -> art, music, and literature
  • function: intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development (pleasing to look at)
  • social science -> a way of life
  • socialist -> living the world as a social being in everyday life experience
  • games we all play in life all stay with us in our culture
  • wide spectrum on everyday life experiences
  • culturs is never given but put in by [[#|human]]experiences
  • also said to be the [[#|study]]of culture objects in different forms
  • traditional of visual media vs social interaction
  • symbols play big cult, in diff, in culture

Defining Mass Culture Notes: (6-8-11)

http://sociologyindex.com/mass_culture.htm
  • how culture gets produced
  • it is mass produced, distributed, and marketed
  • is a set of cultural values and ideas
  • same cultural activities, communications media, music and art
  • possible because of modern communications and electronic media
  • is transmitted through individuals
  • is the view of the citizen as consumer
  • Example: In modern Russia mass culture is through mass media mainly through television. Mass media is used by people of success, family, and [[#|human]]emotions.

http://www.democracynature.org/dn/vol5/fotopoulos_media.htm
  • [[#|offers]]a true glimpse of reality
  • the media is owed which matters in the struggle for social change

Book: Inventing Popular Culture By: John Storey
  • the middle-[[#|class]] fears mass culture because of industrialization, urbanization, and development if an urban-industrial working class
  • mass culture: film, radio, and magazines (uniform system)
  • all mass culture is identical

Defining Folk Culture Notes: (6-8-11)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_culture

  • Lifestyle of a culture
  • Handed down
  • Relates to a sense of community

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tejano_music

Tejano music is an example of folk music.
Tejano Music:
  • Mexican-American population of Central and Southern Texas
  • An ethnic form of music
  • Originated in Texas

http://arts.factexpert.com/502-folk-art.php
Folk Art
  • A genre of art that reflect the traditional values of society.
  • Ordinary people expressing themselves through their creation and construction.
  • Conveys meaning and value to one within their culture.

Folk culture is something that an individual/group values within their culture that was handed down.

Defining Popular Culture Notes: (6-9-11)

  • various forms of popular culture, including music, film, television, advertising, sports, fashion, toys, magazines and comic books, and the medium in which this message moves, cyber culture
http://culturalpolitics.net/popular_culture

In History:
  • Post-War America,
    • popular culture is undeniably associated with commercial culture and all its trappings: movies, television, radio, cyberspace, advertising, toys, nearly anything that is available for purchase,
    • many forms of art, photography, games, and even group "experiences" like collective comet-watching or rave dancing on ecstasy
  • An important part of US material, economic and political culture.
    • "Pop culture" is also one of the US' most lucrative export commodities, making everything from Levi's jeans to Sylvester Stallone movies popular on the international market.
http://english.berkeley.edu/Postwar/pop.html *

  • can be seen by many people as the things that are mainly commercialized and what is "in style"
  • The popular culture founded on the principle that the perspectives and experiences of common folk offer compelling insights into the social world.
  • human social life is not only the art deemed worthy to hang in museums, the books that have won literary prizes or been named “classics,” or the religious and social ceremonies carried out by societies’ elite.
  • The Journal of Popular Culture continues to break down the barriers between so-called “low” and “high” culture and focuses on filling in the gaps a neglect of popular culture has left in our understanding of the workings of society.
https://www.msu.edu/~tjpc/


Mass Culture vs Popular Culture
  • started off as popular culture than grew to mass because of mass culture being more media.
  • Is still controlled by elite.
    • Elite is High Class & Upper Middle Class
  • mass culture
n : the culture that is widely disseminated via the mass media

  • pop culture
contemporary lifestyle and items that are well known and generally accepted, cultural patterns that are widespread within a population


Defining Hegemony Notes: (6-10-11)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony
  • is the political, economic, ideological or cultural power exerted by a dominant group over other groups
  • Hegemony, or the hegemon, dictates the politics of the hegemony's constituent subordinate states via cultural imperialism — the imposition of its way of life, i.e. its language (the imperial lingua franca) and bureaucracies (social, economic, educational, governing), to make formal its dominance — thus transforming external domination into an abstraction, because power is in the status quo ("the way things are") not in any leader(s).
  • Since the 19th century, especially in historical writing, hegemony describes one state's predominance over other states (e.g. Napoleonic France's European hegemony). By extension, hegemonism denotes the policies the great powers practice in seeking predominance, leading, then, to a definition of imperialism.
  • In the early 20th century, Italian political scientist Antonio Gramsci developed the concept of cultural hegemony by extending political hegemony beyond international relations to the structure of social class, arguing that cultural hegemony showed how a social class exerts cultural "leadership" or dominance over other classes in maintaining the socio-political status quo.
  • Examples include a province within a federation (Prussia in the German Empire) or one person among a committee (Napoleon Bonaparte in the Consulate).

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism10.html
  • Gramsci used the term hegemony to denote the predominance of one social class over others (e.g. bourgeois hegemony).
  • This represents not only political and economic control, but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as 'common sense' and 'natural'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony

The Functionalist Approach To Popular Culture


Rituals of Solidarity: "its production and consumption can bring people together by generating a shared sense of social solidarity"(Grazian, 2010)

Example: The Rosary why? Is a symbol of a religion that brings religious groups together.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosary

Public Reflection

Definition: "Great literature, drama, and myth take abstract ideas and universal themes such as death, betrayal, love, envy, regret, ambition, and revenge and make them come alive by embodying them in fictional characters and their fantastic trails" (Grazian, 2010).

Example: Romeo and Juliet why? This book and or movie is an example of public reflection due to its literature and drama dealing with death, betrayal, love, and revenge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet

Rituals of Rebelliom

Defintion: an act or way of acting that can cause people to become hostile in a situation

Example: Halloween costumes; many children and even adults dress in drag, evil or criminal characters, gangs, witches, vampires, etc. Usually dress a way that they would dress in the everyday life.

http://www.anytimecostumes.com/products/p-02186201-03
http://www.anytimecostumes.com/products/p-02186201-04

VIDEO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwM1TM14PA0


June 21,2011
Chapter 5


1. Reflection theory of culture
  • popular culture serves as a mirror that as a society, we hold up to see our own reflection as illuminated in our songs and movies we see in every day life.
  • Challenges: we can see not only how popular culture reflects society and the social order but how it reflects the cultural production process itself.
  • music and novels are reflections of the cultural zeitgeist, they are also reflections of other sociological realities.
    • tech constraints- under which popular culture is manufactured & performed
    • organziation apparatus- structures how it is promoted and sold
    • legal system- regulates the entire process
  • We have to see that there is more than just a cause and effect; there is way more than one reason.

2. 3 additional socialogical realities
  • tech constraints- under which popular culture is manufactured & performed. different things limit the production of culture.
  • organziation apparatus- structures how it is promoted and sold. any organization has a hold on culture. they put limits
  • legal system- regulates the entire process. promoting and copy rights


3. tech constraints pg 96

  • ex. shllack disk: puts limit on the lengths on song

4.organization apparatus pg.95
  • ex. air time is given to popular artist and songs first
  • mtv- british groups first then american band

5. legal
  • pg 93-94

6. cultural convention.
  • the taken for granted rules and agreed upon assumptions that make social activity possible.
  • include that stable use of well-defined language and terminology, etc
  • conventions are also reflected in the standardized tools and materials used to produce popular culture
  • helps through organization ; breaks and kills uniqueness ex: producer needed to cut show and edit the whole thing.

CHAPTER 6

1. pg 113-114
2. pg 116
3. secondary market
  • all alternative opportunities to generate profit from a cultural product beyond its domestic sale in it original format,
  • are associated with a number of strategies for minimizing risk because they create a host of profit-making opportunites without incurring additional production cost.

4. pg 124
5. pg 125-127
6.

CHAPTER 8

interpretive committees- consumers whose common social identities an cultural backgrounds inform their shared understanding of culture in patterned ways.
  • can be organized on the basis of, race, ethnicity, sex, gender, or religion

they share specific intellectual, religious, or political world views within a larger institutional context.
  • example: christian organization

they materalize during public debates surrounding the value or potential harm of certain types of popular culture

  • another public debate emerged among interpretive communities concerning the so-called danger of popular music, specifically rap and hip-hop


TERMS FOR STUDY (6-29-2011)


Aesthetics
  • to how we communicate and express through the senses, through sight and sound, taste and touch
  • sensations produced are immediate and emotional
    • just like the arousal we experience from beauty or sexual attraction
    • how we value them with the beauty and pleasure.
  • EXAMPLES: fashionable commodities, generate sales while devaluing the last season's fashion.

Boundary Spanners
  • people that are responsible for making connections between individual artists and corporate media firms
    • many spanners are managers, agents, or other people representing creative personnel, or even talent seekers
  • EXAMPLES: A&R scouts in the music industry, casting directors in film & television


Conspicuous leisure: “Of course, the very wealthy not only enjoy an excess of money but also free time, as displayed in pursuits that Veblen called conspicuous leisure. They include playing sports that emphasize specialized technical skill and elaborate training, such as golf, polo, fencing, or equestrian riding, and studying dead languages like ancient Greek” (Grazian, 140).

Cultural capital: “One’s store of knowledge and proficiency with artistic and cultural styles that are valued by society, and confer prestige and honor upon those associated with them. Cultural capital refers to one’s ability to appreciate and discuss intelligently not only the fine arts but elite forms of popular culture as well, such as art-house cinema and foreign films, critically acclaimed novels, television and NPR radio programs, and sophisticated magazines like Harper’s and The New Yorker” (Grazian,141).

Surrogate Consumers: Consumers that give importance to the overall output of both media and culture. Surrogate Consumers " expected to make choices on behalf of their readers and viewers, ordinary paying consumers like you and me" (Grazian, 115)
Examples: Magazine editors, movie viewers, and news producers

Conspicuous leisure: "the very wealthy not only enjoy an excess of money but also free time" (Grazian, 140).
Examples: Such leisure include playing sports that emphasize specialized technical skill and elaborate training, such as golf, polo,fencing.